None of the estimated $400 million that the RIAA received in settlements with Napster, KaZaA, and Bolt over allegations of copyright infringement has gone to the artists whose copyrights were allegedly infringed. Now the artists are considering suing the RIAA.

Lawyers who have represented artists such as The Rolling Stones, Van Halen, and Christina Aguilera say artists and managers are upset that they haven’t seen any of the settlement money the RIAA received after suing the popular file-sharing services. According to the New York Post, the artists are “girding for battle with their music overlords,” who respond that they have “started the process” of figuring out how to share the money, most of which was received seven years ago in a settlement with Napster. The RIAA also claims that there isn’t actually that much money available after subtracting legal fees. Whoops.

And there have been a number of recent articles about how artists, including big ones, are making most or all of their money from touring.

I think it has become abundantly clear that everyone who predicts “music will be free” is right. What’s in it for an artist to associate with a label? Nothing for the ones that never got promoted to begin with. And that’s falling out of the labels’ hands, too.

I like how the RIAA goes after downloaders in the name of the artist, accusing you of stealing money right from the musician’s hands,making him go hungry, and virtually erasing any chance for their kids to go to college.

Guess Britney’s kids will still have to work at KFC after high school.

RIAA better settle with the artists because with the Tonya Anderson class action suit that was given the green light and now the artists threatening legal action, the RIAA is going to have a war on both fronts and it will only end badly for them. Metallica led the way in their war against napster so i wonder how they feel about doing all the work and not having anything to show for it.

@DrGirlfriend: Britney’s spawn won’t have to work after they write a book detailing her insanity and how it impacted their lives. Oprah will feature it as “hard-hitting” and “honest” and other such catchwords, spurring Mary Jo Housewife to buy a copy.

I bet the RIAA is going to make up some excuse like they should pocket the settlement money because they are working to protect the artists’ rights or some bull. And then they’ll say if anything, the artists should be paying THEM for their services.

I guess Metallica and Madonna are on the right track by taking the fight against illegal filesharing themselves.

The large lables are mainly for starving artist waiting to get discovered. When an artist makes it big, and still passionate about their work, they should start their own label or team up with a fellow colleague that started their own small label. Large labels (that are members of the RIAA) are pretty much like the Pimps. They deploy their Ho’s out on the street to hustle up some money. When someone is getting some tang for free, they go out and break their legs. When the Ho’s go give it out for free, they get bitch smacked.

Okay, so shouldn’t the RIAA be forced to pay out of the $400 million before legal fees are enforced? Then they might feel the sting. Seems to me the artist should get their fair share of the reward otherwise what was the point of going to battle? After seven years they haven’t moved any closer to shutting down sharing than when it started. If legal fees are eating up that much of the settlements and if the remainder wasn’t put into escrow then the RIAA is clueless and I need to be a lawyer.

“With our deal with 4AD I recieve $.02 per track downloaded.Do the math. I’m not getting rich anytime soon.I happened to mention this fact on my weblog, maybe last year, and asked if someone in the music industry could possibly explain why this is so and I was answered by Mr Martin Mills, owner of 4AD who took this opportunity to remind me of the massive overheads involved and other such ‘facts’. The dialog can be found in my weblog archives and makes entertaining reading, if nothing else. The whole issue regarding the exploitation of CT material is rather depressing and somewhat immoral. Please forgive me for living my life in the present and not always looking back to those ‘good times’. Speaking for myself, as I don’t know the arrangments of Elizabeth or Simon, the best thing that you can do these days in order to make sure that some of the money you spend actually goes to the artist, is to simply download some of the post CT work which is readily available on iTunes and many other download services.”

Quote:

August 08, 2006

Downloads….

For anyone who is interested, my albums Imperial and Continental have just become available at the iTunes store. The exclusive EP Waiting for Dawn is also there and Everlasting will be available shortly. So instead of hitting purchase for some old Cocteau Twins track where I will earn $0.02 of the $0.99 that you are charged per download please humour me and hit purchase on one of my tracks so that I can earn $0.50 of the $0.99 that you are charged per download.It would appear that most of you folks imagine us artists as getting a fair royalty with digital downloads but actually the opposite is true. Old record contracts are adhered to vigorously and we, the starving artists, get fucked even more. If the there is someone from 4AD or any other fucking record company that would like to reply to this and explain to me the morality of paying the artist 2 cents per track then I, and I’m sure a lot of other people, would be interested in what you have to say. Don’t you just love this business? I’m getting close to where Henry Miller must have been when he published his open letter to the public asking for donations of paper and typewriter ribbon. Well, at least it feels that way when I have to shamelessly promote myself like this in order to guilt trip one of you slackers into downloading an album or two…. OK, what if I say please?, um OK what ever. – Robin Guthrie

Quote:i’ll answer this, robin firstly, 4ad does not pay you 2 cents per track, it pays you 10 centsthat’s more than our contract stipulates, because we didn’t think it was fair to apply territorial or packaging deductions in the digital spaceand the difference between our 10 cents and your 50 ? well we made the original financial investment in your cocteau’s music, whereas you’re making it in what you’re doing nowfor that we have the right to a return – ok, we’re making money, but we lose money on many other great artists, and the nature of a label is that you have to make money on some to allow you to stay doing what you’re doing whilst losing money on others – as you will know from bella unionof course in the download price there’s also i-tunes marginwe’re also doing all the work and paying all the expense on the cocteau’s tracks that you’re dealing with on yours – handling all the metadata, digitising, delivering, paying mechanical royalties, all that back room stuff

so yes you make more on your own, and so you should…..bet your capitol and universal tracks don’t make you 10 cents a timemartin mills4ad

Quote:Well Martin, it is possible that there is some miscommunication between yourself and your royalty dept but I think on closer examination you will find that CT receives 6 cents per download of which my share is of course 2 cents. Not much really, is it? You make a fine point about initial investments and the like, after all you did pay the 900 pounds for the recording of garlands but it’s very difficult for me to imagine that you haven’t made that back plus perhaps just a little profit in the last 25 years. Yes, as you said you have a right to a return, I wouldn’t deny you that and I am, of course, grateful to be in the position that I’m in now as it is due, in part, to your support of CT over the years. But that is neither the point not the issue here. The issue is that you are making a disproportionate amount of money from downloads. A dollar is quite simply a dollar and if the subject was approached with any sense of ethics or morality then the artist share would be somewhat higher than it is at the moment. We are talking about catalogue items here, music which has been turning you a healthy profit for many, many years. There is no new investment, no packaging, no marketing, merely a cynical way to expand your profits at the expense of the artist. With the advent of the necessary technology to make digital distribution a reality should come a reappraisal of how the system works. I presume that on our original contract you are still deducting 10% for breakages during manufacture and the like, something that was out dated in contracts even in 1981 when it was signed – well I can’t remember any Cocteau Twins records released as 78 rpm’s anyway…. Well that’s you’re thing and I guess you don’t lose much sleep over it but from my viewpoint, somewhere I like to call the moral high ground, I think it’s a little seedy and more than a little greedy. What you may have lost contact with, existing in the elevated stratosphere of being a big music industry tycoon, is that these things affect peoples lives and their ability to continue producing the art which, not only makes you cash, but can also touch the audience in such a way that the world becomes a more beautiful place. I am blessed for I know how that feels. I guess you don’t. I suppose it may be easy to forget if you have your head in spreadsheet all day but if you look deep inside yourself you may remember a certain enthusiasm for more than just exploiting young bands. A passion for music perhaps. You’re in a powerful position, you could actually use that power for some good, don’t you know. You don’t have to be magnanimous, only just. Sure there will always be willing victims lining up waiting for their chance of fame and success, so I doubt that my words will have any impact on you, I don’t expect you to become a charity for fucks sake, but I would expect you to remember that the bands that you exploit and the music that they created are the people who put you where you are today.Excuse me if that sounded a bit harsh but, well you know, knowing that a huge body of my work and a huge chunk of my life benefits neither myself, Liz or Simon and in the future will not benefit our children is, well how can I put it, fucked.Thanks..For our next discussion Mr Mills and myself will discuss the merits of selling Cocteau Twins records as Mid-Price releases thus avoiding paying any substantial royalties whatsoever.

Ironic that RIAA would sit on soooo much money once the lawsuits were finished. 3 years was long enough, but come on we’re going on seven years and they still haven’t gotten any money. I wish I could go back in time and tell the artists, the RIAA is going to screw you far worse than we are.

I can’t really laugh at the artists who started taking a stand for illegal downloading, being a musician myself I can definitely see how badly it is on the pocketbook and how you really need every penny you possibly could just to not even come close to breaking even. I just spent a grand for a 4 song e.p. to be recorded (32 hrs of time). Then you’re expected to give it away? yeah right. This is work, and it’s pretty hard work at times, and we’re expected to pay for the privilege of working? Yes it’s glamorous when you get big i guess and it would be cool to be famous and shit, but there’s so much work involved in so many aspects, do you pay your boss to go to work? i think not. And like everything else the bigger you get, the more expenses you have it just doesn’t go away because your huge. Sure you obviously finally make enough money to live a very nice life, but ever thought about how much money goes in to a huge ass tour?
The RIAA are a bunch of idiots though, I will give them that. Finally get the money back and the artists won’t even see it? Total bullshit if you ask me. Fucking idiots everywhere, it’s an epidemic, no common sense anymore.

I pretty much expected this outcome. It is the exact business model of ASCAP. They shake down bars for about 10 grand for performance fees claiming local bands doing covers or a DJ or a jukebox is performance. Bars get intimidated and pay it or quit having bands. Musicians never see a penny. I know someone who has never seen a penny from ASCAP on material they know has been on the radio and performed live extensively.

This whole thing just needs to die and the model needs to change to buying direct from the performer.

@chus3r: There is a chance that a judge would rule that RIAA owes the artists money OVER/regardless of their legal fees. It’s not the judge’s/downloader’s fault that the RIAA hired overpriced attorneys who were better at racking up fees than making effective cases.

The whole music industry needs to be overhauled. It didn’t really make sense 50 years ago and it truly doesn’t make sense now. Bands don’t need the large labels like they used to. Throw something up on MySpace and pass out a few free CDs at concerts (yes, heaven forbid, give some work away to get more) and if you’re good it’ll take off.

A real problem is that most small bands think they’re far better and far more unique than they really are. Not everyone has what it takes to be a nationwide star. Very few do. I’d even argue that most of the top 40 artists today don’t and are only being propped up by the large labels who have (over)invested too much money into them and are trying to recoup their investment.

@DrGirlfriend:
Big names still get well-paid, because they aren’t being fucked over much worse than the smaller artists, but are doing a lot more business. I wouldn’t worry about Ms. Spears’s or her kids’ finances.

Besides, big names are what the recording industry wants. Fewer acts and less variety means less overhead. You WILL like what they tell you to like, because it’s good for their bottom line. Hey, Clearchannel’s playing ball, why aren’t you?

RIAA is equivalent to the lady who got millions for spilling McDonald hot coffee on her self. Only they never got hurt, just made the issue and collected the money.Somebody needs to put some ice on that. I think Ozzy should go bite the RIAA’s head off.

If you want your favorite musicians to actually get they money for their album sales, BUY THE ALBUM DIRECTLY FROM THE ARTIST! Go to their website/MySpace and find out how to buy the albums direct, or buy the albums from them at one of their shows. The artist will make at least 25% profit this way, and the RIAA gets NOTHING.

Or if that’s not possible, buy the album USED. It doesn’t help the artist, but the RIAA also gets NOTHING from the sale.

There used to be things called record stores and one would go into them and after brousing around, one could then buy the record he or she liked. Then cds came and the record stores became cd stores, and then nothing. I love classical music I would pay for a cd or even a record. The music biZ seems to have not only destroyed itself, but it is now in the business of destroying the consumer as well. A pocks on all of the lousy sobs.

I’m not surprised by this. I vote that if a company has won the award “Worst Company in America”, then they are forced to keep said title until something extremely redeeming is done, which we know won’t happen.

The RIAA should be allowed to keep the title until they fold, they deserve it and they try very hard to keep it! The evidence exists they like being known as that, I mean look at what they did for us to have this place to comment in :)

Anyway, such a shame, poor artists. They have been getting screwed for years and somehow expected things to change when an enemy, by the name of “consumers” (aka pirates), appeared. I guess they thought with a common enemy, the RIAA would be more sympathetic instead of apathetic as always.

@morsteen: No offense, but that’s the typical siren cry of the failed artist.

1. Nobody says you have to give it away. There’s plenty of legal download sites you can do business with from iTunes and Amazon, to eMusic and WE7. According to a recent post on his blog, Trent Reznor paid just $38 to get his latest releases on Amazon through Tunecore. Can you honestly not try and make some cash back on that?

2. I’m always impressed when artists complain on these kind of forum posts, yet never mention who they are. Who are you? Is Morsteen your recording name? Are you available for download anywhere? Do you have a website or MySpace profile where anyone reading about your plight can listen to and perhaps purchase your music?

If the answer to these is no, your problem is marketing, not piracy. You failed to promote yourself in any meaningful way on an international public forum (even mentioning your recording name could get interested parties looking at your music), so if you’re failing to make a profit with music you need to learn how to market yourself.

3. Who says you have to go on a “big ass tour”? Surely there’s bars, coffee houses and clubs you could play at within a few hours drive of where you live? Build up some grassroots support and you might be able to make a living. Not get rich – make a living.